In the manufacture and maintenance of aircraft, heavy equipment, machinery and appliances it is often necessary to remove and install hoses, lines and pipes that are attached to fittings by a threaded fastener (for example, a flare nut, B nut, or the like). Moreover, such equipment and machinery may often utilize a plurality of conduits that are placed close together, in confined or otherwise hard to access spaces, or at awkward angles.
These threaded fasteners, therefore, must often be rotated with open end wrenches and various types of pliers, risking damage to the fastener and providing only a slow manual manipulation of the fastener and little or no means for limiting the torque delivered to the fastener. Removal and installation of threaded fasteners on the various forms of conduit may thus be slow and tedious.
Several types of wrenches to rotate such fasteners in such a way as to make the process faster and cause less damage to the fastener have been heretofore suggested and/or utilized. U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,712,256, 2,712,257, and 2,758,493 disclose open ratchet wrenches which can turn a hex fastener encircling a line. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,564,955, 3,668,949, 4,914,987, and 4,374,479 disclose gear driven tools for rotating fasteners or appliances that hold such fasteners.
These tools, however, suffer from many of the same problems as open end wrenches (such as the ratchet wrenches described above), in that when a plurality of hoses, lines or pipes are clustered together or are close to accessories of the equipment being worked on it is very difficult to find enough room to manipulate the tool in such a way as to engage and operate the tool. In addition, many such tools are unduly complex and/or are configured in such a way that they can slip off the fastener and cause damage to the fastener, the tool and/or the user.
Of those tools described above utilizing geared peripheries, some have utilized a single divided collet as a holder for nut rotating accessories thus practically negating use for flare nuts on continuous lengths of conduit (i.e., such tools, while providing a collet that can be split and opened to grip accessories, have not provided accessories that can be split and opened to encircle the length of conduit), and have not provided for their use with an assortment of interchangeable sockets for different applications. Often, complex closing and locking procedures are required which limit the applications and/or complicate usage of such tools.